Somewhere, law (excruciatingly arrived at), or fashion (often underestimated, never absent), or deeper arguments (heard only by an elite) will draw the line. There will remain the familiar problem of oversubscription. Just as a bachelor's degree was once a proud emblem and is now tarnished by being commonplace, beautyand, lest we grow smug, maybe even brainswill come to be so. Indeed, since beauty is another form of fashion, generations may sport characteristic, trendy noses and thighs, just as we currently see passing fads in children's names. But names can be changed with the stroke of a pen.
Of course, the first genetic editing and rewriting will be done for the rich. When F. Scott Fitzgerald told Ernest Hemingway that the rich were different, Hemingway could confidently reply, "Sure, they have more money." No longer will that be strictly true. Rancor arising from built-in superiority, by right of inheritance, could soar.
One of our challenges will be to spread the benefit, or else see growing class separations of frightful complexity and depth. We could reach the stage in which one could spot the rich by their looks, or even their smarts. Or their mates. Classical liberalism holds that information is good. If you can afford it, that is.
Why, then, should a prospective bride not know the precise genetic endowment she would get from a candidate swain? We are just beginning to consider whether a genetic propensity for disease should be made known to insurance companies or employers.
Those legal battles can be settled in the context of privacy rights. But how about something as intensely personal as marriage? People care deeply about their children. It seems plausible that they would want to know what they are getting before going to the altar.
Being Human
All these naturally arising problems will tend to make us think of other people as anthologies of genetic traitsto atomize, a most thoroughly modern impulse. This reflects science's tendency to slice and dice experience for convenience of analysis, but it is a poor model for knitting up the already raveled threads of a tattered society.
So somewhere, a line will be drawn. It had better be fixed by open public debate, rather than by our current method of leaving it up to lawyers in courtrooms, who usually know little and care less. Biology touches the wellsprings of our deepest emotions, and will make posturing before juries even worse than now.
Other developments, just over the horizon, will probably force us to entirely rethink present ideas of good and evil. Within a generation, we will probably be able to make cocaine from a bacterial culture. Kids will grow it or morphine or opiumin bathtubs, not in elaborate labs.
This will do for our current drug prohibition what home-brewed beer did for Prohibition. Even easier ways are plausible: say, a bacterium which lives in your digestive tract and makes just the right level of cocaine every day. (Something like this has happened naturally. A patient turned up who was permanently drunk, from a yeast which made alcohol in his innards. Therapy freed him of a condition others might have envied.) Far more exotic methods of eluding detection, and of making new designer drugs, will no doubt emerge.
Such a ready supply will almost certainly doom a simple "War On Drugs" approach. Legalizing, taxing, and regulating their use will come to be far cheaper than following a Prohibition mentality against an ever-improving biotechnology.
In fact, I believe it already is cheaper and smarter. We have over 1.3 million in American prisons, the majority for drug-related crime. The average sentence for murder in California is for fewer years (eight) than the average sentence for drug crimes.
Prohibition of anything is about power and imposing a uniform value system. Technology in the next century will probably act against central control. This will push our cultural boundaries, with biotech steadily increasing the friction. In the end this may force a new social solution, resembling the European programs already using partial legalization, combined with the social pressure that has reduced tobacco and alcohol use.
Dreams and Dreads
Out of playfulness--and cowardice--I've scrambled many ideas together without talking about when they might come.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
nfl jerseys|11.16.10 @ 11:10PM|#
nxthfg